gwydion | (no subject)

* TW: Sexual Assault "Senator told FBI last fall of new information about Kavanaugh:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senator-says-fbi-did-not-investigate-allegation-against-kavanaugh/2019/09/16/a881f584-d883-11e9-adff-79254db7f766_story.html?noredirect=on

* TW: Sexual Assault "Democratic candidates demand Kavanaugh’s impeachment after new allegation in Times piece:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/democratic-candidates-demand-kavanaugh-impeachment-after-new-allegation-in-times-piece/2019/09/15/3bdc160e-d7ce-11e9-ac63-3016711543fe_story.html?noredirect=on

* TW: Sexual Assault "Calls for Justice Kavanaugh’s impeachment are mounting. Here’s how it could work.:" https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/15/calls-justice-kavanaughs-impeachment-are-mounting-heres-how-it-could-work/?noredirect=on

* "Trump stands up for Brett Kavanaugh over ‘liable’:" https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/15/trump-brett-kavanaugh-1496181

* "Unhealed wounds of Kavanaugh confirmation reopened by new report:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/unhealed-wounds-of-kavanaugh-confirmation-reopened-by-new-report-69108293880

* "‘It’s like being on the edge of dying’: Chechnya man arrested and tortured for being gay:" https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/09/16/chechnya-man-arrested-and-tortured-for-being-gay/

How to donate to Rainbow Road: https://www.rainbowrailroad.com/donate

* "Brexit and social media behind rise in anti-LGBT hate crime, police chief claims:" https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/09/17/brexit-social-media-anti-lgbt-hate-crime-west-yorkshire-police-crime-mark-burns-williamson/

* "Arizona High Court Grants Stationery Shop License to Discriminate:" https://www.advocate.com/politics/2019/9/16/arizona-high-court-grants-stationery-shop-license-discriminate

* "Trans woman says she was ‘on the ground bleeding’ after suspected transphobic attack:" https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/09/18/trans-woman-attack-transphobic-portland-police-bureau-atlas/

* "Gay Man Says He Was Held Down, Assaulted at Homophobic Church:" https://www.advocate.com/religion/2019/9/17/gay-man-says-he-was-held-down-assaulted-homophobic-church

* "Milo Yiannopoulos tried to join the furry subculture but it backfired spectacularly:" https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/09/16/milo-yiannopoulos-tried-join-furry-subculture-backfired-spectacularly/

* "This is what not to say to somebody who is HIV-positive:" https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/09/17/hiv-what-not-to-say-gateht-thomas-lizzie-jordan-think2speak/

* "What No One's Saying About Cokie Roberts: She Was an LGBTQ Ally:" https://www.advocate.com/media/2019/9/17/what-no-ones-saying-about-cokie-roberts-she-was-lgbtq-ally

* "Legal Immigration:"

"Legal Immigration: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)" (Watch on YouTube)

* "A Tale of Two Rallies: Elizabeth Warren Tackles Wealth Disparity & Trump Rambles About Hispanics:"

* "Felicity Huffman's Lax Sentence, Mike Pence's Horse Bite & Lou Dobbs's Ass-Kissing Trump Tribute:"

* "Brett Kavanaugh Faces Yet Another Sexual Assault Claim:"

* A long dead lover and I used to have this whole thing about Ric Ocasek being an alien from the same planet David Bowie came from. I vaguely remember us trying to derive details of their home world culture based on '80's videos.

The Cars were such a part of my teens.

* "The Cars - Magic :"

"The Cars - Magic (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)" (Watch on YouTube)

* "The Cars - You Might Think:"

"The Cars - You Might Think (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)" (Watch on YouTube)

* "The Cars - Drive:"

"The Cars - Drive (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)" (Watch on YouTube)

* The autodialers have been particularly aggressive the last couple of weeks. Monday there were five calls in the last hour before the alarm, plus I think three others earlier in my sleep cycle. Why don't I turn off the phone while I sleep? Because two of those calls were real. (A time sensitive medical one and the Coop telling me that my gravy will never come). The gravy thing is really distressing. It was the perfect vegetarian gravy: ideal taste and texture, super easy to use. Sigh. I went in and we switched the order to some other strange gravy. Let's hope I like it.

The really infuriating thing was three of the eight calls Monday was a robot from my medicare advantage that could not understand my voice calling to demand I self accuse for skipping a dose on one of my meds. 1. I haven't been skipping doses of this particular drug so WTF. 2. A bunch of my other meds allow some variable dosing. For example, I usually take one rantidine to smooth over the patch towards the end of my Omneprazole dose before the next dose kicks in, but I am allowed a second if there's break through nausea. Or I take three doses of my lung ampule when my lungs are bad, but I usually only need two a day and I'm allowed to do that because, you know time consuming and side effects. Why take more than I need if it's gong to raise my blood pressure and give me heart palpitations? Or I stop taking my AS meds when I'm on antibiotics. I'm a competent adult and I know the difference between things like simvastatin and levithyroxine where you don't want to skip and things where my Doctor trusts my judgement and lets me take what I need.

Look, I get why you want meds tracking for say, patients with serious psychiatric or heart conditions or dementia, but that's not me. I feel like one size fits all is a terrible idea. This should be opt in for patients who are able to manage their own affairs. Also, I really, really resented the accusatory tone of the recorded message, especially since I hadn't missed any doses. There was no opt out option. I was forced to block the number, thus freeing another scammer to start the harassment cycle again.

Apparently they only have one autodialer, because a live human woke me up to harass me over my simvastatin again on Tuesday (one of five calls to wake me up.) even though I still hadn't missed any doses. Luckily my grumpy rant caused the live human to opt me out which they actually can do. I

This nanny bullshit makes me hostile. I'm a mentally vigorous person who juggles 21-25 meds on an elaborate schedule every fucking day. My brain process large quantities of information on a regular basis. I do not need constant interference just because my disability means I am extremely fucking poor. I want to be left the fuck alone unless they are offering me something that actually helps like better benefits. Stealing my sleep so a machine can scold me is not helping.

Anyway, Tuesday I went down to do a DNR form with my Doctor nd a nice lady she was training. I have very strong views about things I do not want done to me when I'm unconscious or incoherent because I have a realistic view of what, say a feeding tube or ventilator are really like and what my likely end of life is going to look like given my assorted degenerative genetic diseases. My family has always been like that: realistic about the facts of dying, prone to choosing quality over quantity, rejecting the fucked up denial of American death culture. I come from a loooong line of people who make jokes on their own death bed and emphatically reject heroic measures when it's clearly time to just let go. Like a lot of health care workers, they too had their own DNRs and had a similar attitude towards the whole thing, so we chatted and did up the form and sent me on my way. Next on the list: make an appointment with Law advocates to get the legal end sorted.

Don't worry, gentle readers, this does not signal my imminent demise. It's just that I've been meaning to get around to this stuff for several years, but you know: chronic illness.

* The other day a very old friend used the phrase "Vegetarian Libertine" to describe me in a story about something that happened over a decade ago and the phrase has stuck in my mind ever since. Certainly it did describe me in my heyday, but there was something fundamentally pleasing about it that goes deeper.

See, the "liber" in "Libertine" means freedom. In the original early modern usage it meant free thinker. This meant of course atheists and agnostics, but also people with a variety of unorthodox thoughts on a wide range of topics like ethics, government, natural history, etc.. Of course given the tenor of the times freedom from conventional religious morality implied in a lot of minds an embrace of things like heavy drinking, debauchery, theater going, etc., and so you get the more earthy meaning that carries forward to us. Wine was never my thing, but oh did I love sex and I was definitely a free thinker on a variety of topics, for all I am a Buddhist. I did live a wild, wild life full of wit and philosophy and free love.

Of course I live a rather monkish life now. I am too ill and tired and poor to go hunting for lovers, but those old libertines often ended up in bodies as ruined or more ruined than mine. John Wilmot, lord Rochester died in his thirties, incontinent and his face literally rotting away from the syph, and he was a Libertine's libertine. So I guess it fits still in a way.

I burned so fast and bright and I don't regret it. I am still a free thinker, here in these long days of my ruin.

Vegetarian Libertine. Yep.

* "Orson Welles Should Have Played Harry Mudd On Star Trek:" https://www.shatnerchatner.com/p/orson-welles-should-have-played-harry?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNjEzMzc4LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxMjU5OTgsIl8iOiJINmxnVyIsImlhdCI6MTU2ODc3NzU3OCwiZXhwIjoxNTY4NzgxMTc4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.T3utl9RyPQshQbr6IC0FZQstX1jej_k9YVSDi24XhKc

*****
* Full list of Resistance and charity links has been migrated to my profile as it was getting out of hand.

* "How you can help Hurricane Dorian disaster relief:" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/08/hurricane-dorian-disaster-relief-how-you-can-help

* Angry at 45 for his plan to steal food from 3.1 million people who need it including stealing lunch from 500,000 children? Here is a big activism resource for fighting back. "USDA SNAP Rule Opposition Campaign - Comments Due September 23, 2019!:" https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hGBajjsAwdueJFfXospFnUo89wAWR2HHPxNt8heUUIE/edit?fbclid=IwAR0GoYF521ASlr9Nwm6xfTxBsPVhyqLmVlkjbOjLCjnJ4Iblv6OI8Kzufao

* Master Post For the summer of resistance: https://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/2108368.html

* Here are a bunch of state level links to help people in immigrant detention: https://taibhsearachd.tumblr.com/post/186058182962/woundability-this-4th-of-july-celebrate-the

* Angry about the concentration camps on our Southern Border? Here is a list of useful things you can do: https://medium.com/@togetherandfree/feel-helpless-amidst-the-horrific-immigration-news-youre-not-how-you-can-make-difference-today-108dc42de88e

* "More Organizations to Support Helping Kids in Concentration Camps:" https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/201920.html

Here is a massive list of things you can do to help refugees inside and outside of the Camps: https://s-leary.tumblr.com/post/185783586806/so-youve-probably-seen-the-post-going-around

* A list of organizations to help you run for office: http://lovingmyselfishard.tumblr.com/post/167330144634/psst-hey

* Have something you want to tell your Congress Critters? If you can not protest in person, here are some other options:

Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.

This App phones your rep for you: http://takeastance.us/

Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resistbot.io/

* This is a cool person and the clothes are being made from an ethical source. Looking for cool inclusive Pride themed merch? www.nerdykeppie.com

* HorrorMux is open for apping the next story, which is a 1994 Lost Boys type thing. Available Archetypes are here. I'm Martyr/Angel if you want to find me.: http://horrormu.com/index.php/Available

* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com or paypal.me/Gwydion

* If you are interested in helping, right now the Cat things we need most are:
https://www.amazon.com/PetSafe-Deterrent-Activated-Repellent-Environmentally/dp/B0721735K9

And: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J669H65/?coliid=I1EUR00IM1I3P&colid=1EVWGXWUM3YU7&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

* Birthday/Solstice master list: https://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/1925021.html